The links to Everton just won’t subside so given that Paulo Fonseca plays a hybrid style of football that crosses Pep Guardiola with Jurgen Klopp dubbed ‘a symphony of Beethoven and Metallica’, he would be an attractive proposition for the Blues.

The Portuguese coach’s current two-year deal with Ukrainian club Shakhtar Donetsk ends this summer and the feeling is that he will leave but would Goodison Park, where Sam Allardyce is contracted until 2019, be the right move?

Informed opinions on football in Ukraine are quite tough to find but Manuel Veth, the owner and editor in chief of the Futbolgrad Network , has been following Shakhtar Donetsk’s fortunes in recent years.

Holding a doctorate of philosophy in history from King’s College London, his thesis entitled: “Selling the People’s Game: Football’s transition from Communism to Capitalism in the Soviet Union and its Successor States” will soon be available in print.

Veth believes that the time will soon be ripe for Fonseca to move on to pastures new.

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He told the Liverpool Echo : “We hear statements that he hasn’t made up his mind yet whether he’s going to stay or not but there’s a general sense at Shakhtar Donetsk that this is the end of the line for the squad.

“There will be changes, Taison, Marlos, all these guys, while Bernard has said he’s going to leave.

“Fonseca will be thinking whether he wants to rebuild the side or take a different role but I think is stock is quite high right now and he can more or less pick and choose where he wants to go next.

“I could see him being enticed by the right project. He has said there are offers from Portugal, there are teams in Spain and Italy looking at him.

Braga's head coach Paulo Fonseca celebrates with the trophy after his team won the Portuguese Cup final against Porto (Image: PATRICIA DE MELO MOREIRA/AFP/Getty Images)

“He was on the shortlist for Bayern, a club I am very well-connected to, but they are mostly looking now for a German-speaking coach and Fonseca doesn’t speak German.

“He’s linked with those kind of clubs and your stock is high, that is when you sound out ideas from what is out there.”

One of the most striking images of Fonseca came from when he donned a Zorro costume for a post-match press conference after beating Manchester City , fulfilling a pledge to do so if his side qualified for the knockout stages of the Champions League and Veth confirms the 45-year-old is certainly something of an extrovert.

He said: “He’s a very cool guy. I’ve lived in England myself and I think that’s something that’s a factor.

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“People love that about Klopp. Fonseca is not only a great coach but the personality is important.

“In Ukraine I think a lot of people were surprised when he showed up dressed as Zorro.

“To do that, and to make fun of yourself, that really says something about him.

“But he’s a gentleman. He strikes quite a figure in his suit, he’s a good-looking man and has a strong personality.”

While Farhad Moshiri’s deep pockets could be tempting - at the club’s general meeting earlier this year he declared “So long as I’m the major shareholder, financial issues are irrelevant” - Veth is wary that other, seemingly more straightforward options might prove more appealing.

He said: “You look at Manchester City and the amount of money that Guardiola had to spend just to fix the side.

“I have a couple of friends who follow Everton and from what I hear is that many different coaches have put their hands on the squad and when something like that happens you often get a mix rather than a philosophy.

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“It can be an overwhelming task and that for me is maybe the biggest question mark.

“There are other clubs where Fonseca might just have to slot in and make tweaks and take over a project that is already doing quite well like he did at Shakhtar where it’s evolution rather than revolution, that can be easier as there are a lot of unpopular measures that will have to take place at Everton.”

Fonseca has proven himself up for a challenge in his current role though where he replaced Shakhtar Donetsk’s legendary Romanian coach Mircea Lucescu.

Veth said: “It was hard for him coming in. His predecessor Lucescu had been there for 12 seasons and when he had started Shakhtar Donetsk are not the club that they are today.

“Despite the conflict and everything else that is going on in Ukraine they are the best run club in the post-Soviet space.

“Lucescu was very much a big reason for that, he was in charge of bringing in players, building and restructuring the entire club.

“He won eight league titles and a UEFA Cup so that’s big shoes to fill for anyone coming in.

“When Paulo Fonseca first came in he was unable to sign any new players because they were out of the Champions League and on top of that, there was the situation in Ukraine and the fact that the conflict in the country meant that the team had to be relocated (first over 750 miles to the west in Lviv between 2014-16 and then 200 miles north to Kharkiv since 2017) he pretty much had to deal with what he’d got.”

One of the biggest tactical successes implemented by Fonseca has been getting the best out of Brazilian playmaker Bernard - who was once linked with a move to Everton himself - a scenario that has shades of the Blues attempts to work a system around record signing Gylfi Sigurdsson this season.

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Veth said: “I’ve followed Shakhtar Donetsk very closely for five or six years now and the one thing that struck me was that the build up play from the back was always very organised already under Lucescu and when they went forward it was very structured but that can be a good or bad thing because sooner or later opponents figure out how you play.

“What Fonseca did was he integrated Bernard, a player who everyone considers a number 10, really well in that set-up but when he put him in there you often see the three attacking midfielders (Bernard, Taison and Marlos) switching positions almost fluently.

“That made it very difficult to try and calculate how they attack. They still swarm forward but the the running patterns are very chaotic at times although that isn’t a negative in this instance as it’s a way to confuse the opposition and it works very well.”

He added: “The good thing about Shakhtar Donetsk for Fonseca was that a lot of the other coaching staff speak Portuguese because they have a large Brazilian contingent so that was easier for him.

“They’re a very cosmopolitan club in general so that transition was maybe easier than if he had gone to any other team in Eastern Europe.

“Going from Braga in Portugal to a situation like that is a big jump but he really made a lot out of it.”

Having been one of the few managers to beat Manchester City this season, would Fonseca fancy rekindling his rivalry with old pal Guardiola on a more regular basis next term?

Any move to Everton would seemingly require a fresh approach but Veth says the Shakhtar boss has never been lacking in this respect.

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He said: “Fonseca and Guardiola are friends. There is a lot of the same football philosophy there.

“He’s got all these Brazilians who are very fast and athletic but like to play technical football so that system of the slow build-up play doesn’t work.

“It’s very different to the system that the Ukraine national team would use which is far more defined in a way.

Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola

“When you play teams like Manchester City, Napoli and Roma they have to be the team that can adapt to the situation.

“It’s very interesting how Fonseca has the Pep Guardiola approach but he realises ‘this is not going to work for me here’ so he almost has to take that gegenpressing style similar to what Jurgen Klopp did at Borussia Dortmund and try and mix the two systems.

“What this showed was how adaptable he is. He doesn’t play the same way in the Champions League as he does for the domestic games in Ukraine but that really works.”

Veth added: “He absolutely has an ability for tactical flexibility. What Fonseca does at Shakhtar Donetsk is not necessarily the same as what he will do at his next club.

“He might find different kinds of players, a different philosophy and say ‘yes I’m flexible I can work in a different way.’

“Given his background of taking varying factors on board, whoever gets him, because I’m pretty sure Everton are not the only ones looking at him, will get a coach who is not necessarily married to one philosophy.”